One Day and 5 appointments down @the Mayo Clinic

Well we are one day and 5 appointments done at the Mayo Clinic.

Of course the first 4 appointments were for a gastric emptying study, so I suppose they could be considered as one really long appointment. Except that we got to walk around the campus, and actually come back to the hotel between the last two.

This afternoon was with a Kidney Transplant specialist. Dr. A did not have access to all of Jerry's medical records as far as his high blood pressure/potassium problems. So we had to go through everything in Jerry's history that we could remember. Which means that there are probably multiple medicines, tests, etc. that we either forgot about, or never knew the results of. I volunteered several times to call Jerry's tricare manager at Robins and ask her to fax the information down, and Dr. A declined. Even with us telling him honestly that we were sure that we were forgetting things. I am almost positive that if he had everything in front of him he would find something that someone else overlooked, thats how through his questioning was.

He was most amazed though that the Air Force doctors never have pushed the high blood pressure/potassium issue as far as finding out the cause until Jerry was hospitalized last year. He looked at us like we were crazy when we said that really the most extensive testing has occured in the last year. Yes he went to Landstuhl once for a week, and twice to a specialist in Pensacola, neither of which turned up with anything.

Dr. A said he thought Dr. Gupta with CNN would be amazed at the waste of resources with a case history like Jerry's. Like I said, we told him that we were sure we were forgetting tests, and the like, but he said they should have pushed it more, not moved us from Eglin until they figured it out, because all they did was push the problem off on yet another doctor.

Now the problem here arises in the fact that this good Doctor A does not want Dr. B to do the surgery on Friday. At least not until the potassium problem is solved.

Dr. A arranged for Jerry to have several tests run in the lab this afternoon (so I guess 6 appointments in one day when you add those in). When he gets the results of those he will give his formal opinion on surgery.

What is most frustrating about this, possiblity of not doing the surgery, is that most of the specialists that Jerry has seen in Georgia seem to be in agreement that the surgery will help with his high blood pressure, because of how severe his hernia is, and how far into his chest cavity it goes.

Then for us, you also have to figure in that this would once again be a wasted trip. Because it sure didn't feel like Dr. A was going to help us solve the potassium problem. It just felt like he was amused that the Air Force has let it slide for this long. It seems like the doctors all want to blame this potassium problem on Jerry's past drinking, which yes it probably is a result of, BUT its only gotten worse since he quit drinking. None of the doctors want to give us or help us discover a way to help the problem.

Oh and add in that once again my parents will have traveled (or at least my dad, again, mom for the first time) from Arizona to Georgia to watch the kids for us, for the doctors to do nothing!

We meet with the surgeon tomorrow morning, and I am praying that Jerry's potassium test that he had this afternoon will come back high enough that they will either admit him to pump up his potassium to where they will do the surgery, or that it is high enough to where they feel comfortable doing the surgery.

Of course Jerry said if it has dropped dramatically since last Friday, maybe they will admit him to see if they can figure it all out once and for all.